In an emotion-laden account, NPR's Terry Gross exposed the brutality of partial-birth abortion today. She interviewed photojournalist Brent Stirton, who "took a photograph that shocked the world," as NPR explains, the victims "murdered, execution-style...simply slaughtered."
Just kidding. They're up in arms about some gorillas that got killed in the Congo. Not to belittle the atrocity. I mean, they're sentient beings, and in many ways they resemble humans. The gorillas, I mean. Not those fetus thingys. (HT: Wife)
Perhaps it was serendipity that led me to read Caleb Stegall's essay on food and politics while biting into a tasteless apple. And is it the case that salmonella actually carries the flavor in tomatoes, because ever since that scare, every tomato I've had the misfortune to bite into has the flavor of stale air. Just a thought. Here's a money quote from Stegall's piece:
"To bridge this chasm requires a firm recognition that self-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain not the rarefied sophistication of the credentialed witch-doctors and their organic brews but membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted).
That's the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson (yes, that Jefferson) County, Kansas, though it's not taught much in social studies textbooks."
Speak Truth in Love, and Carry a Big Ole Whooping Stick
My last two essays at World on the Web have concerned wisdom offered by Dorothy Sayers and Henri Nouwen. In each instance commenters raised the rumor that the writers were gay. It's disappointing that we continue, in the Christian community, to have this outsized, paranoid obsession with homosexuality. It's also fascinating that so many Christians will take a statement like the foregoing sentence and spin it into the belief that I am somehow departing from Christian dogma on homosexuality. I was surprised to learn that some readers, having read months ago my (unoriginal) claim that many Christians respond to homosexuals in an unchristian manner, thereby concluded that I am heretical on the topic. Find me the passage, you fussy Pharisees, where Jesus instructs you to hate homosexuals.
Warning: this will necessitate your setting down those stones and picking up your Bibles.
And speaking of disappointment, if Christian Republicans won't trouble themselves to read an economics book before opining on immigration, they might bloody well consider the Bible. If I hear one more of them trot out the obfuscation about legality, I'm going to scream. Find me one Christian using this excuse to support mass deportation of illegals — just one — who honestly supports legally opening our borders to considerably greater inflows of immigrants, and I'll eat my shoe. They claim they are up in arms because these people are coming across the border illegally, but the truth is that not a one of them supports any significant increase in legalized immigration. So this "they're breaking the law, which a Christian can't support" talking point is just a self-righteous cover-up of the unflattering truth, which is that they don't want those different-talking brown people here at all.
And aside from the neo-Nazis, World Net Daily is maybe the most shameful of the bunch, with its thoughtless fusion of pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-conservatism, replete with snake-oil banner ads, "Invasion America" headlines, and panegyrics to Tom Tancredo.
I kept all the boys last night while Wife had a much-needed break. She had a pedicure, and a meal without interruption. The boys and I did alright. Isaiah ate his sweet potato mush without fuss, and then crawled from Daddy to brother to brother, begging tiny spoonfuls of chocolate pudding.
I explained to the boys that old-school Brits call desserts "puddings," which they thought was odd but endearing. Then I told them that french fries are "chips." That seemed just downright odd to them, especially since "fries" doesn't mean potato chips. Caleb asked me where the french fry was invented. "Germany," I told him. He'll realize that's funny in a couple more years. In the interim, however, he's likely to misinform all his friends.
My head is in a frenzy of idea-connecting and imagination, which I can't explain very well, but which comes over me from time to time, usually as the harbinger of a fruitful writing period. Which is nice. The downside is that I lose my place in conversations, and have difficulty stringing together tight, reasoned sentences on the page until the storm has passed, or until I am in its eye, or whatever storm-type phraseology applies here, since I find myself in the midst of a storm metaphor and haven't the strength or inclination to type my way out of it.
So what will follow (above, because you know how these fancy blogs spin themselves out in time in an upward direction) are a few of these random, streaming thoughts, with the distasteful and secret and specially-saved-for-some-other-writing-project ones removed.
Why spit them out as separate posts? Because I think some people get demoralized when they come here and find one of my typical, three pages long essays. Plus breaking them up will signify the fragmented state of my thinking. And also because I feel like it.
I realized, after posting about his birthday, that I haven't said much about Isaiah. This has been largely the result of his being unable to do anything but poop and squawk. But I gave it some thought, and came up with two lists of particulars for those of you who want more information about the littlest Woodlief.
Things one year-old Isaiah has decided he likes:
Ice-cream cake
Daddy's spaghetti, when finely chopped
Being carried by one of his older brothers
Pulling out all the cookbooks and scattering the loose-leaf recipes neatly folded therein across the kitchen floor
Getting tossed in the air by Daddy
Everything about Mama, but especially her breasts
Giving open-mouthed kisses
Yanking Daddy's goatee
Yanking the cat's tail
Baths
Having Isaac climb into his crib, even though Isaac's parents have repeatedly threatened him with bodily injury if he does it again
Things Isaiah is decidedly against:
Getting licked all over his baby-food smelling head by the dog
